Oedipus is Osiris:
And The Strange connection of…
1. The book of Isaiah
2. Cyrus, the King
3. Jesus
4. And Playwright Sophocles
By Andre Austin

The poet and playwright Sophocles (495-406BC) wrote three plays devoted to a mythical king named Oedipus.

Immanuel Velikovsky wrote a book Oedipus and Akhenaten in 1960. theory that the playwright Sophocles wrote allusions to a real Egyptian King Akhenaten . Because Oedipus was blind and had trouble walking due to bad legs and other parralles gives Veikovsky enough inference to say it was Akhenaten. What do we do with scholars comparing Moses and Akhenaten side by side. But if we go back to 1500 BC, before the time of Akhenaten, Moses and Oedipus we can read from the Egyptian Book of the dead which informs us that Osiris had bad feet and was blinded. For example:

“I’am he who is without his power of walking” p220 and again

“I, the avenger of right and truth, have avenged his eye. I have swathed the eye of Osiris”p294

It might be possible that many of the Black College fraternities dance ceremonies with a cane/stick is related some how to the ancient Egyptians.

Martin Bernal author of Black Athena stated in Volume 2 of his work, “In Volume 4 I shall be looking at the equally intricate mythological parallels between…Oedipus and the Egyptian k3 Mwt.f (bull of his mother)” see p120-121.

Notes:

Velikovsky theory of Akhenaten being a Moses isn’t out of the box. The myth of Osiris was transferred often times for recycle with fictional and historical figures. This complex issue is compounded when ancient Egyptian historian Mantheo (300BC) states Moses changed his name from Osarseph after the god Osiris. Back in Egypt Kings often incorporated the myths of their religious beliefs into their customs and lives.

Oedipus had foster parents as well as Moses too.

Paul Roche who translated some of Sophocles works into English makes these comments. “A look at the name Oedipus is revealing, for it is stuffed with latent meanings, all of them emblematic of the themes of Oedipus The King. Oida means I know (with the present sense of eido, I see): which encapsulated Oedipus compuslsion to ferret out his past and see who he really is, which, when he does, impels him to punish his knowing, his seeing, by putting out his eyes.” When I reread Plutarch’s “Isis and Osiris I became more amazed at the Oedipus, Osiris link. According to Plutarch for the Egyptians “Their King and Lord Osiris they portray by means of an eye…there are even some who explain the meaning of the name as “many eyed”.
The historian Xenophon recorded Socrates stating that Sophocles was his favorite tragic poet. It’s a coincidence that Herodotus and Sopholes were contemporaries. Sophocles in his work “Oedipus at Colonus” made an interesting statement:

“Oedipus; Oh, what miserable and perfect copies
Have they grown to be of Egyptian ways!
For there the men sit at home and weave
While their wives go out to win the daily bread” –337 ff

I felt lucky that my memory has served me well to turn to Book 2:35 of Herodotus and read:” The Egyptians themselves in their manners and customs seem to have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind. For instance, women attend market and are employed in trade, while men stay at home and do the weaving”. To me this is amazing because it proves Sophocles mixed history with mythology.

A little bit of similarity between Oedipus The King and the 41st book of Isaiah. I believe some of the style and use of words are too similar to avoid mentioning it.

Oedipus: You mean, you know and will not say?
You’d rather sacrifice us all and let the city rot?
Tiresias: I’d rather keep you and me from harm.
Don’t press me uselessly. My lips are sealed. Isaiah 41:1 starts out saying “Silent”
Oedipus: what, nothing? You miserable old man!
You’d drive a stone to fury. Do you still refuse?
Your flinty heart set in hopeless stubbornness?
Tiresias; My flinty heart! Oh, if you could only see
What lurks in yours you would not chide me so.
Oedipus: hear that? What man alive, I ask,
Could stand such insults to our sovereignty and State?…

Tresias: the rotting canker in the state is you.
Oedipus: Insolence!
And dare you think you’re safe?

Tiresias: Yes, safe for truth has made me strong
Oedipus: What Truth? Hardly learned from your profession
Tiresias: No. Learned from you, who force it out of me?
Oedipus Force what? Say it again. I must have it straight.
Tiresias: Was it not straight? You’d bait and goad me on?
Oedipus: It made no sense. So speak it out again.
Tiresias: I say, the murder of the man
Whose murder you pursue is you
Oedipus: What! A second time? This you will regret.

Tiresias: shall I add to it and make you angrier still?
Oedipus: to your heart’s content. Mouth away!
Tiresias: I say that you and your most dearly loved
Are wrapped together in a hideous sin, blind to the horror of it
Oedipus: you think you can go on blabbering unscathed
Tiresias: Unscathed, indeed, if truth is strength

(Isaiah 41: 1-2 also connects Righteousness with Judgment of truth. Later in verse 3 Isaiah says he will be unscathed. Too much similar talk for it not to be the same.)

Tiresia: Poor fool! These very gibes you mouth at me
Will soon be hurled by every mouth at you.

Oedipus: You can’t hurt me, you night-hatched thing!
Me or any man who lives in light.
Tiresias: You’re right. I’m not the one that fate cast
For your fall

Apollo [the sun God patron of arts] is enough. It’s in his able hands
Oedipus: Creon? Of course!
Was it you or he that thought up that?
Tiresias: hardly Creon. You are your own worst enemy.
Oedipus: Oh wealth and sovereignty! Statecraft
Surpassing art!

Oh life so pinnacled on fame
What ambushed envy dogs your trail?
And for a kingship that the state put in my hands… (Cyrus says he got the world)
( In his hands)
Tell me when did you ever play the prophet Straight? (See Isaiah 45:13 where he says “I will raise Cyrus in my righteousness: I will make all his ways straight”)

In this part of the play resembles Isaiah 41:25

“I have stirred up one from the north, and
He comes-
One from the rising sun who calls on my (Repeated Isaiah 45:6-7)
Name ( similar clay cylinders of Cyrus say this too)
He treads on rulers as if they were mortar, ( About light)
As if he were a potter treading the clay (repeated in Isaiah 45:9 just four verses away from mentioning Cyrus name. And is this an allusion to the clay tablets of Cyrus that matches Isaiah? Cyrus talks about light and conquering other rulers. If it is its stunning!)

(No one can deny Sophocles and Isaiah used similar analogy with treading on rulers with art crafts. Verse 7 of Isaiah uses the very word “Craftsman” but this isn’t all)

26 Who told of this from the beginning, so we could know,
or beforehand, so we could say, 'He was right'?
No one told of this,
no one foretold it;
no one heard any words from you.
27 I was the first to tell Zion, 'Look, here they are!'
I gave to Jerusalem a messenger of good tidings.
28 I look but there is no one-
no one among them to give counsel,
no one to give answer when I ask them. (Are they implying the question is a riddle?)
29 See, they are all false!
Their deeds amount to nothing;
their images are but wind and confusion.

Now isn’t this something the play of Sophocles deals with foretelling events and answering riddles. The downfall of the house of Oedipus was foretold by the gods before Oedipus was born, but it was foretold because it was going to happen; it was not going to happen because it was foretold, and it was going to happen because Oedipus being what he was, made it happen. The riddle had to do with “What being has only one voice, has sometime two feet sometimes three, sometimes four, and is weakest when it has the most. Oedipus answer referred to the life of man, but the riddle belongs to a cluster found all over the world, many of which refer to the weakness of the sun in the morning and evening and its strength at midday. I think that in the light of the Egyptian Sphinx dedication to the sun in the mourning and evening the parallels is quite remarkable”-Martin Bernal in his “Black Athena” p.69.

I do not know who wrote the last parts of Isaiah. The critics politely call him Deutero-Isaiah, which means “Second Isaiah”. Shall we call him the forger of half of Isaiah (thirty or forty chapters of it? The two writers of Isaiah are at least two centuries apart. I wonder if the second Isaiah copied parts of Sophocles. Sophocles was born in 495 BC, about 30 years prior to Cyrus the great death in 529 BC. Many bible scholars believe Isaiah wrote about Cyrus as the Jews first Messiah in the Bible. If it can be proven that Isaiah II took notes from Sophocles it advances scholars claim the book of Isaiah was written by at least two individual two hundred years apart. According to William Neil’s Pocket Bible Commentary “The general theme of chs. 40-48 is the impending liberation of the exiles by Cyrus conquest of Babylon” see p.252. However Neil says “No words of old testament scripture played so large a part in early Christian theology as Isaiah 53:1-12 (Luke 24:13-34; Acts 8:26-39)” p255. Put I shall prove it all was Cyrus later on.

The more I study this strange connection between Isaiah, Cyrus, Jesus the more I’m convinced there was out right mythology interjected into our holy books. Allow me to slowly explain some more of the theft of Sophocles play. First I will quote a book written in 1962 by Aubrey De Selincourt called The World of Herodotus “Oedipus the King is the only play of Sophocles, or of any other Greek playwright, in which, apart from the poetry, the actual plot is a gripping one; or perhaps I should say the way the development of the plot is handled; for the final issue of the story, like that of all Greek plays, is of course Foreknown. The legend, of which the play is concerned with a crucial incident, is as follows. Laius, king of Thebes, was told by an oracle of Apollo that he would have a son whose life would be accursed: it was his destiny to kill his father and marry his mother. The child was born, was there any way to avert his appalling doom? Laius and his wife Jocasta thought there was-the baby should be destroyed. Accordingly they gave it to a shepherd with orders that it should be exposed, with an iron pin through its ankles, in a lonely glen on Mt. Cithaeron, and left to die. But the shepherd heart failed him, and gave the child to another shepherd…Oedipus grew to manhood…In the course of his wanderings he came to Thebes-a city of which he knew nothing. There he found everything in confusion. Laius, the king, had just been killed by an unknown wayfarer; The Sphinx (possibly Isis) was devouring all who failed to answer her riddle. Oedipus answered it and destroyed the monster power, and the Thebans in gratitude made him their king…In Oedipus mind felt he was guilty: he it was who killed King Laius at that chance encounter on the road. Oedipus mad with horror blinds himself with pins from a woman’s dress”.

I see many similarities with Cyrus, and Oedipus.

1. They tried to kill Cyrus and Oedipus on a mountain. Herodotus states that “The Magi had interpreted a dream that his daughters son would usurp his throne…the kings orders are that you must expose this infant in the wildest spot you know amongst the hill” Book 1:110. Jesus would be put to death on the hill of Golgoths, or place of the skull. And all were tried to kill them in infancy like Werner Keller noted: “The chosen child… (They wanted killed) was attached to a number of prominent figures in antiquity, to Sargon of Akkad, Moses, Cyrus even to the Emperor Augustus as well as to such mythical characters as Oedipus”-see The Bible As History p.372-373. I guess he forgot Horus.
2. Isaiah says, “I will go before you (Cyrus) and will level the mountains I will break down the gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron”. Is this an allusion to Odepipus whose ankles were tied up with iron pins.
3. A shepherd takes Odepipus as his son in the play. And Herodotus reports “And it so happened that Cyrus- the supposed son of the (Cyno) the herdsman” Book 1:114.
4. In Isaiah 42:18-19 Hear, you deaf; look, you blind, and see! Who is blind but my servant and deaf like the messenger I send. Who is blind like the one committed to me? Blind like the servant of the lord”. If Isaiah was referring to Cyrus, which I think he was, this would fit well with Sophocles play where Oedipus went blind.
5. The Magi gives information to Herod the King and he fears Jesus rise will bring about his death. King Laius felt the same way too in Sophocles play. Also king Astyages wanted Cyrus dead. All the kings wanted them killed in their infancy.
6. Cyrus raised by Foster parents and so was Oedipus as well as Moses.
7. Both Moses & Cyrus cause water in river to dry up so their troops could cross.
8. Both Oedipus & Moses dealt with a Plague.
9. Niccolo Machiavelli in his Art of War quoted a contemporary historian of Socrates named Xenophon. Xenophon wrote a history book of Cyrus called Cyropaedia. I believe Xenophon is reliable because Diogenes Laertius stated “He gained the friendship of Cyrus” (the younger).Machiavelli states in Book 6: “Many (Soldiers) have gained an advantage by pretending to run away in great fear and by leaving their camp full of wine and provisions; the enemy has gorged himself on these and others have returned and fallen upon the enemy while he was drunk or asleep. In this manner Cyrus was served by Tomyris ( a Scythian who had him crucified in 530BC and buried in a stone Mausoleum in Iran). This brings alive Isaiah 20:13 who said “Let us eat drink; for tomorrow we shall die”. This may also be the origin of the legend of Jesus last supper of eating and drinking wine. It also may explain why Peter in his lost Gospel says Jesus/Cyrus stated that his power rather than God had forsaken him. It fits well that a military General/King would say he lost his power. Anyway in my other essay,“The Bible biggest contradiction”), I prove without a fraction of doubt that Jesus couldn’t of said “My God why has thou forsaken me”. I also touch on Isaiah 53:10 where God said he was pleased to “Bruise him”. I believe this was Cyrus too because just a few lines up in Isaiah 53: 2 it stated “He shall grow up before him as a tender plant”. Herodotus 1:108 reported that Cyrus father dreamed that his daughter was pregnant and a vine (plant) grew from her private parts.
10. Two clay cylinders of Cyrus statements found by archaeologist match Isaiah 53: 4,5 and 10. “The dwellers in Babylon (Jews included as exiles)…I freed from the yoke that ill became them. I repaired their houses, I healed their afflictions”. On another cylinder he says: “Sin, the light of heaven and earth, with his favorable omens gave into my hands …I brought the gods back into their sanctuaries”. You can’t deny that Isaiah said: “Surely he hath borne our grief’s, and carried our sorrows…he was wounded for our transgressions…and with his stripes we are healed”. Verse ten goes on “yet it pleased the lord to bruise him…the pleasure of the lord shall prosper in his Hand .You can find Cyrus quotes of his own cylinder seals in The Bible As History p327-328. The author even admits, “The Bible Chronicler had known the text of the clay cylinder” (in 2 Chron.36). Because he quoted from a portion of the cylinder I omitted. I feel confident in saying that the Christian writers had no business stating a claim in the book of Isaiah referred to Jesus when Cyrus was the man was intended. The same language Cyrus used Isaiah used. Building construction claims of Cyrus cylinder is confirmed by Isaiah 44:28.
11. Diodorus says Cyrus died by crucifixion at the hands of the Scythians. Matthew reports Jesus died by crucifixion from the Romans. Herodotus 1:214 states that there were many accounts of Cyrus death. So his death is a mystery. Oedipus would die mysteriously in either at Colonus or at Athens. Now at this something John in the book of Revelation states Jesus died spiritually in Egypt and Babylon.
12. Herodotus 1:177 reports “Cyrus was engaged with the north and east, bringing into subjection every nation without exception”. This may of given Isaiah inspiration to say “I have stirred up one from the north, and he comes- one from the rising sun (East) who calls on my name” Isaiah 41:25. The Catholic notes claim Cyrus is the one summoned. I believe this too because it matches Herodotus notes. So when we move down to the other verses it matches Oedipus history of his life being foretold and no one being to answer a question which I believe is the riddle of the Sphinx. I also believe that when Isaiah talked about leveling mountains was done in retaliation for people wanting to kill Cyrus on top of a hill. Bible scholars already admit chapter 41 of Isaiah was talking about Cyrus so don’t they admit Isaiah chapter 40 too? I shall offer evidence that along with chapter 41 chapter 40 talked about Cyrus too. Just because some writer in the New Testament had Jesus repeating its words doesn’t necessarily mean that Chapter 40 was referring to Jesus instead of Cyrus. With that said, first let me quote from its famous passage.
ISAIAH SOPHOCLES
“A voice of one calling: Then where shall your yelp of
In the desert prepare horror not resound…echoing
The way for the lord from Mount Cithaeron…
Make straight in the wilderness what flood of sorrows-ah! you
A highway for our God. Do not dream- will pull you
Every valley shall be raised up down and level off your pride
Every mountain and hill made low -From Oedipus The King
The rough ground shall become level also compare verse 6 and 9
The rugged places a plain-Isaiah 40: 3-4 were there’s more crying
Yelp another word for cry
(Basically the whole chapter 40 is included but after I quote from king and Herodotus I will interject other verses at convenient times. The same talk about crying and mountains are repeated in Isaiah 44:23. Be careful to note Cyrus name is brought up in verse 28 just 5 down)

Before I go on presenting my evidence I must digress and say that one of my Heroes Martin L. King paraphrased from Isaiah in his famous “I have a dream speech” in 1963, which was a call for justice, fairness and equality for Black people. I can’t resist reciting his inspired poetry:

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plain, and crooked places shall be made straight and the glory of the lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together”.

Now back to the evidence of Cyrus being the inspiration for Isaiah 40. My well-trained eyes have seen connections of Herodotus reports of Cyrus and Isaiah chapter 40. Herodotus said in Book 1:125-126:

“The letter set Cyrus thinking of the means by which he could most effectively persuade the Persians to revolt, and his deliberations led him to adopt the following plan, which he found best suited to his purpose. He wrote on a roll of paper that Astyages had appointed him to command the Persian army; then he summoned an assembly of the Persians, opened the roll in their presence and read what he had written. ‘And now, he added, I have an order for you: Every man is to appear on parade with a sickle’

The order was obeyed. All the men assembled with their sickles, and Cyrus next command was before the day was out they should clear (level see Isaiah 40: 4) a certain piece of rough land full of thorn bushes, about eighteen or twenty furlongs square. This too was done, whereupon Cyrus issued the further order that they should present themselves again on the following day, after having taken a bath. Meanwhile Cyrus collected and slaughtered all his fathers’ goats, sheep, and oxen (Isaiah 40:11) in preparation for entertaining the whole Persian army at a banquet, together with the best wine and bread he could procure. The next day the guest assembled, and were told to sit down on the grass (see Isaiah 40: 6; 7; 22) and enjoy themselves. After the meal Cyrus asked them which they preferred-yesterday’s work or today’s amusement; and they replied that it was indeed a far cry from the previous day misery to their present pleasures. This was the answer, which Cyrus wanted; he seized upon it at once and proceeded to lay bare what he had in mind. ‘Men of Persia’ he said, listen to me: obey my orders, and you will be able to enjoy a thousand pleasures as good as this without ever turning your hands to servile labor…Take my advice and win your freedom”. (Freedom was define as justice of balance scales in Isaiah 40:12) Its also interesting to note, “Cyrus success owed much to the material resources of his kingdom. It was rich in minerals, above all in iron, and the high pastures (grass) of the valleys lay a great reserve of horses and cavalrymen…Greek were told already by Herodotus that the Persians loved flowers”- The Penguin History of the World By J.M Roberts p.155-156 Now what do you think gave Isaiah 40:6 to say “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field”?

Why did Cyrus and Isaiah link the same type of analogies with freedom if they were not talking about the same thing? Like I said bible scholars already admit chapter 41 and 42, 44 spoke of Cyrus. I already proved a quote from Herodotus for chapter 41 was applied to him so why exclude chapter 40?

There are other verses in Isaiah that appears to fit the character of Cyrus military career.

“I will make rivers flow on barren heights,
And springs within valleys.
I will turn the desert into pools of water
And parched ground into springs- Isaiah 41:18

It appears Isaiah is talking about diverting water. The military strategy of Cyrus used the river Euphrates for his advantage. The river Euphrates ran through the center of Babylon. Cyrus dug channels and canals, to divert enough of the water so that his army could enter unopposed along the riverbed. Now if verse 18 fits Cyrus why not verse 15 of chapter 41 that talks about leveling the hills? This would be the same type of things said in Isaiah 40:4? I’m just providing additional arguments for my case.

I know that Herodotus probably didn’t read the Jewish scripture. I base this assumption on my addiction to some of the Gibbonian fine writing. In one of Edward Gibbon’s footnotes he reports: “Josephus has persuaded many of the Christian fathers that Plato derived a part of his knowledge from the Jews; but this vain opinion cannot be reconciled with the obscure state and unsocial manners of the Jewish people, whose scriptures were not accessible to Greek curiosity till more than one hundred years after the death of Plato (that would be 248 cause Plato died in 348 Bc) Please refer to chapter 21 of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. So Herodotus who died in 420BC would not have copied anything from Isaiah. Both wrote independently and compliment each other. The second Isaiah “He (Isaiah) is the first who reports the lord as saying ‘there is no god but I’. He believes in the resurrection of the body, perhaps as a result of Persian influence. His prophecies of the messiah were, later, the chief Old Testament texts used to show that the prophets foresaw the coming Christ”, (which is incredible) see A Western History of Western Philosophy By Bertrand Russell p.312-313 Herodotus 1:131 reports “Persian customs which I can describe from personal knowledge. The erection of statues, temples, and altars is not an accepted practice…they also worship the sun, moon earth, fire, water and winds, which are their only original deities”. And the Egyptians did the same.

I believe that there were myths and history that was mixed with religion. Apparently some of these myths had common themes that got recycled into various stories of different peoples for thousands of years.

For further information being related to Jesus not matching Isaiah please read my other essay “The biggest contradiction of the Bible”. I hope I provided enough information for your satisfaction.

I shall end on a soft note. Because the Jews were so fond of Cyrus the Great they gave a warm-hearted eulogy of him near the end of Isaiah. But first let me remind you that Cyrus was buried on the southern slopes of a long range of hills there still stands among the rough grass of the highlands a small stone building (mausoleum) dating from the time of Cyrus. Guess what Isaiah Eulogy was? “The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: merciful men are taken away. Among the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion…Upon a lofty and high mountain hast thou set thy bed…behind the doors also and the post hast thou set up thy rembrance…he that putteth his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy mountain” Isaiah 57: 1-8 and verse 13. Well Cyrus is laid on top of a hill with stone and did write an inscription for peoples memory.

So whats the point in studying all of this ancient history. This I’ve asked myself and come up with two answers. Well its satisfies my conviction that the crucifixion of Jesus was just an allegory, a symbolic event written to carry a hidden meaning. It did not happen to Jesus cause Iasiah reference was to Cyrus. Paul states that there is no basis for Christianity if there is no physical resurrection. The Jews didn’t believe in resurrection until Cyrus freed them. Paul states “And if Christ be not risen, then our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain”. Corinthians 15:13-16. Obviously I agree with this assumption and train of logic. My second reason I get from this essay is on the historical side. I’m seeing the need in the world for another Cyrus, the Great. With the world under religious turmoil in the middle east we could use a tolerant of all religious faith from persecution. Just like Cyrus allowed exiled Jews to return to Palestine and so we see a need for another Cyrus to allow Arabs to return to their original homes in Palestine. Most of their homes were bulldozed so we need a Cyrus like individual to repair homes too. Who will be our candidate to walk in the foot steps Cyrus. Could it be Bush? I have little faith in it but he could do the job if he had it in his heart to do it. Our Republic should demand that our future leaders be well grounded in the history and development of all religions. So that the mistakes and success of the past can serve as a semi-guide so we can act smart with distributing justice, fairness and truth for humanities sake.